May 31, 2007
Who were they really booing?
Did you happen to hear about the Miss Universe competition?
Michelle Malkin provides a pungent view of the abuse and invective hurled at the lovely Miss USA -- as well as America, too.
Jay Nordlinger offers an interesting theory about why the audience erupted in loud booing when Miss USA took the stage.
And it ain't because they don't like her -- or America, either.
As Lucy used to say, the doctor is in: I’m going to try to analyze those Mexicans, who booed the American contestant in the Miss Universe competition (held in Mexico City).
We talk a lot about shame/honor in the Arab world — but what about Mexico? It must be deeply humiliating that millions upon millions wish to flee Mexico — and for one country: the U.S., to the north. It must be deeply, deeply humiliating to be a society so backward and hopeless that many millions believe they have no choice but to flee.
So — in my freely amateur analysis — when they boo Miss USA, or other Americans, they are really saying: “I hate myself.”
America is the enemy, to be envied and resented. America is also the friend, to provide opportunity, to save.
When those Mexicans during the U.S.-Mexico soccer game chanted “Osama, Osama,” did they really mean to express support for al Qaeda? Were they really standing up for mass murder and enslavement? Or were they instead saying, “I hate myself — I hate our condition. I hate that America has to rescue us from poverty and degradation”?
I'd forgotten about the "Osama!" chants during the soccer match; it was appalling then, and no better in retrospect.
And it requires greater understanding and empathy than I'm capable of mustering to write off the behavior of the Mexican mobs as merely the socio-economic/cultural equivalent of teenage angst and a bad case of moral acne.
And lest someone feel compelled to say that it was just a stupid beauty pageant or sports event, there are times when -- paraphrasing Freud -- a cigar isn't just a cigar.
Notice how your fellow citizens aren't trekking across the border by the millions, heading to Mexico, Canada, and that balmy workers' paradise off our Southern coast, Camp Castro?
America: the worst place on Earth -- except when compared to every other nation.
Posted by Mike Lief at May 31, 2007 07:13 AM
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